A familiar entrepreneur always told me that no matter how many times he called his colleague, who was basically working in the home office, he always heard some background noise. His colleague was either sitting on public transportation, or in a cafe, or just driving somewhere, or in a gym, and so on. In the meantime, the work really didn’t go either, so it wasn’t about the colleague doing his commitments at his own pace in the evening, early in the morning. This is a problem because in this case, the employee violates the psychological contract he or she has with the employer. The latter assured him that he would work in a position more favorable to him, but he actually equated the home office with paid leave. A similar example from a manufacturing company: Every time a boss put his foot out of the factory, everyone immediately caught on to something else.they despise why the leader is so strict with them.

A more common case is when an employer breaches a psychological contract. For example, there is an unwritten rule in most organizations that if an employee does the job assigned to him or her fairly, in return he or she may sooner or later advance in his or her own career . Whether an employer actually promotes a well-performing employee is not an obligation under a formal contract, yet, if the promotion is not made, he or she loses that colleague in an envelope.

We often find in psychosocial risk assessment that cooperation between managers and employees is not violated within the formal framework, but at the level of the psychological contract, thus poisoning the culture of the given group, making the parties cynical and alienated from each other.

This is where we arrive at the coronavirus. The epidemic period in many organizations decided whether the importance of employee well-being was an empty duma, perhaps a mere employer brand building, or a real intention behind it.Under current law, an employer has a wide margin of discretion as to how to treat its employees during such a period. There are many activities that can be done online in the same way as in the form of presence with the help of modern technology tools. It is also relatively easy to solve the dilemma of whether the co-worker who has stayed at home is doing enough, as this is partly - mostly? - managerial responsibility: are the tasks well defined, are they appropriate in time and quantity, are there checkpoints, are there a target against which progress can be measured?

Consider the case where the activity can also be done online and the leader can track well whether there is really a substantial amount of work going on! Even in these cases, an employer can say that he does insist on on-site, attendance work. According to the formal contract, you have every right to do so, as you can go to work at the moment, the curfew restrictions do not apply to going to work. However, under the psychological contract that exists in most organizations, the employer has a duty to protect the health of its employees, which includes not exposing them to unnecessary risks.

For example, when workers in a coronavirus-at-risk group are forced by a worker to continue to go to work despite the fact that their work - or lack thereof - is transparent, they kick up the psychological contract. The question is, do you anticipate the long-term consequences of this? Are you also aware of the fact that a breach of a psychological contract often results in less committed workers who only meet the mandatory minimum thereafter?

Coronavirus-like crises are also serious tests of how seriously employers and employees think about tacit cooperation agreements. Does the employer really think seriously that human resources are the most valuable resource, and does the employee seriously think about his or her commitment to be a useful member of the organization even if he or she does not have in mind? This is a test that neither party wants to fail, because what is said about the resumption of a psychological contract is what is said about the resumed relationship: "when heated, only the stuffed cabbage is good!"

Expert: Dr. Péter Zsolt Szabó, work and organization psychologist , WORRI

#contract #psychiatric #work psychology #coronaviru